Saturday, February 28, 2009

Today marked one month since I brewed my Barleywine, and it was time for it to make the move from primary to secondary.

I decided to add a little extra flavor to the Barleywine in the form of 2oz of medium oak chips that have been soaking in Jack Daniels for a week, and 1oz of Centennial hops (pellets). I'm planning on letting it sit like this for another 2 weeks, and then bottling. After bottling, I'll let it sit as long as I can make myself wait. Hopefully I'll have a nice pipeline by then to keep me from being impatient.

Had another sample, and this time I could taste a little more of the alcohol overtones, although not nearly as much as many commercial Barleywines. There was a slight fruit aroma, although I couldn't quite place what it was.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

First off, let me just say that using a bucket when the fermentation blows out the side sucks. The sweet beer decided to congeal and create the most difficult seal to break that I have ever seen. It took me ~10 minutes to pry an opening at the top of the bucket.

On to the beer...

The gravity was down to 1.022, giving me a current ABV of 9.8%. Sipping on the sample was surprisingly nice, considering the age of the brew (9 days). The brew isn't harsh, not particularly boozy, and a pleasant malt flavor.

I think this is going to be a VERY good brew, especially once I oak and dry-hop it.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

This beer was drank at an initial temp of 47 degrees in a brandy snifter. The flavor/aroma really opened up once it had warmed up a bit.

Appearance - This beer is a wonderful amber/ruby color. Very clear, although with a lot of yeast in the bottom of the bottle. I could see a full pour resulting in a cloudy beer. Small head, retains a bit of foam for the duration. Lacing is good, but not exceptional.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

So since I've never been one to get into things slowly, I decided that a fun second brew would be a nice big Barleywine. The recipe was so big, I didn't feel confident in the first runnings all fitting in my 10-gal cooler, so I invited my friend Joe over to do a second batch (Ordinary Bitter) from the second runnings, and use his MLT for half of the grain.

This is a slightly modified recipe that was originally posted on Homebrewtalk.com

We ended up overestimating the amount of water that would be retained in the grain, and had about 10 gallons of first runnings. This resulted in a long (~3hr) boil, which may give some nice flavors. The OG got up to 1.100, which was slightly less than I had planned, but should still make for a nice Barleywine.

We ended up with 7 gallons at the end of the boil, and I was originally going to bottle and force carb some of the remaining wort in a 2-gal bottle, but the taste was just way too much of everything to think about drinking. The hops were overpowering, and the sweetness was cloying. But I can see why the unfermented wort soda is made in Mexico.

This was literally fermenting within minutes, and was going crazy for 3 days. Even using a blow-off I thought it was going to blow the lid of the fermenting bucket. The smell during fermentation was amazing, a mixture of the Centennial and Cascade hops that makes me think dry-hopping this will be a very good idea. I also plan to make this the first beer to which I will add oak chips, giving it yet another layer of flavor.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

For my first foray into All-Grain brewing, I decided to make a classic English style and brew up an ESB. This beer was brewed January 14, 2009.

The grain bill was fairly simple, 9.5lbs of Maris Otter and ~1lb of Crystal Malt (60L and 20L). Based upon Beersmith, this should put it right in the color range for an ESB, and be somewhat high on the gravity, but in style.

The Hop plan was to go with a combination of Fuggles, and EKG to have that traditional English flavor. Unfortunately the local Homebrew shop had no Fuggles. I ended up going with Warrior instead, since 1oz had more IBUs than 2oz of Fuggles. I ended up only needing 0.7oz for bittering, and I threw in the extra 0.3oz at the end with the EKG

The brew session did not go as smoothly as planned. :( The plan was to use my 10-gal cooler as the mashtun, and slowly fly sparge using the other cooler as the hot liquor tank. Unfortunately, the HLT that had not leaked with cold water decided it would let water get everywhere when filled at 170F.

Couple the leaky HLT with misremembering how full to fill the kettle, and you end up with a finishing volume of ~3.5 gallons. In addition to the low volume, the gravity was on the high side at 1.065. I added one gallon of filtered tap water, pitched the yeast, and hoped for the best.

First sample – January 31, 2009I moved this beer to secondary last night to make room on its yeast cake for a Barleywine, and had a chance to give it a try. This beer finished lower than any of my other beers to date, 1.010, and tasted great! It had a nice amber color, and a good long bitterness. I can't wait to taste it when it is carbed.

In my desire to go all-grain, and improve my beers, I've been scouring craigslist for weeks hoping to find someone selling a 10-gal Igloo cooler. After no luck, I went to OSH and was all set to buy one for $60. Then as I was walking to the register with the cooler in hand, I decided that I should check online one more time, and buy it tomorrow if I didn't find anything.

When I got home and started watching the Kings lose another game, I hopped onto craigslist on my cell, and what do I see? 10-gallon Coleman cooler for $10!

Picked it up the next day, and it was in great shape. Only problem was the spigot stained pink from red gatorade...but that was getting thrown away anyway. :)